Disney World Crowd Calendar Report – March 20 to 26, 2016

Spring Break! The week leading up to Good Friday is historically one of the busiest weeks of the year. Not only is it a holiday week but it also is Spring Break for many of the largest school districts in the Northeast and Southeast. During the week we saw all four parks hit the highest level on our Crowd Calendar at least once. Although the peak wait times during Spring Break and Easter week do not quite reach the high points that we see over the Christmas holiday the crowds were still extreme by any standard. Guests who used touring plans would not notice the crowds as much as the average visitor who showed up and “winged-it”.

Let’s look at how the crowd levels stacked up each day last week on the Touringplans.com Disney World Crowd Calendar Report:

For busy weeks like Spring break and Easter we often see the weekends slightly less crowded than the weekdays. Most families travel to their destination on a weekend and make Monday their first day in the parks. Then they typically travel home on the Saturday or Sunday. Last Sunday was very busy but not quite as busy as what we saw Monday through Friday.

Only Epcot stayed less than a ’10’ on Monday although wait times were very near the highest averages we see throughout the year at that park. Wait times at the other three parks hit some of the highest levels we will see all year. Most headliners hit average wait times above 60 minutes and Space Mountain averaged a remarkable 138 minutes between 10 am and 5 pm.

Tuesday’s crowds at all four parks were extreme. Only during weeks like Easter, Spring Break, Thanksgiving and July 4th do we see crowds this large. However, in the last year we have seen more days reach the maximum crowd level on our scale than anytime in the past decade. Space Mountain averaged 132 minutes, Test Track 113, Tower of Terror 127 and Kilimanjaro Safaris averaging 108 minutes.

Once again on Wednesday, Epcot was the only park not to hit a level ’10’. Epcot was still very busy however with average wait times like 34 minutes at Spaceship Earth and 91 at Test Track. Peter Pan’s Flight was a standout with an average wait of 98 minutes, as was Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster at 115 minutes.

Another solid ’10’ day across the board on Thursday. This was the busiest day of the week with every key attraction at Magic Kingdom hitting a crowd level ’10’. Even Living With The Land, a perennial walk-on, had an average wait time of 17 minutes.

Extreme crowds stayed across the resort on Friday although wait times were a little lower at Epcot. Living With The Land dipped down to a 12-minute average. Animal Kingdom had some of the busiest attractions all week. There we saw average wait times like 61 minutes at Expedition Everest and 65 minutes at Kali River Rapids.

Saturday capped off the busiest week at Disney World we have seen since Christmas 2015. Magic Kingdom saw average wait times like 61 minutes at Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, 50 at Jungle Cruise, and 73 at Splash Mountain. Guests of Hollywood Studios saw more extreme waits on Saturday as well, like 110 minutes at Toy Story Midway Mania.

Fred Hazelton

Fred Hazelton maintains the crowd calendar, theme park wait time models and does hotel rate analysis for the Unofficial Guides. He's also done the models for the new mobile wait times product Lines. Fred Hazelton is a professional statistician living in Ontario, Canada. His email address is fred@touringplans.com. You can also follow him on Twitter: @DisneyStatsWhiz.

It looks like only Epcot is drawing in less than expected, & just barely. Soarin’ is sorely missed T.T

I’m very concerned with the crowds levels this week & next. Yesterday (Monday 4/4) was predicted CLs 5 to 7, but turned out to be 10s, with Epcot pulling a 9. Kind of shocking.
Leaving tomorrow night for WDW. Looks like our days (April 7-13) might be 9-10s, instead of the previously expected 4-7s.

Agree with Heather, Disney is currently jammed.Tried to use a touring plan at MK yesterday but the crowd predictions were so far off it was unusable. Not too impressed so far. HS today is also packed full and with lots of attractions now closed the lines are long. It was over an hour at 9am to sign up for Jeff training and you MIGHT get an early evening slot – ridiculous.